Summary:
A lot of good things can be said about Apotheon. It instantly catches the eye with an art style that takes paintings from ancient Greece and brings them to life. Varied boss designs create memorable encounters that are tailored to the mythos of each God. Marios Aristopoulos' dark and powerful soundtrack expertly matches the setting.
Sadly, these highlights are let down by controls that feel floaty and imprecise. I often felt like I was controlling a flailing drunkard, and I'm not referring to the wine drinking challenge of Dionysus. I like some of the concepts they tried to build into combat but the final implementation was rarely satisfying. Additionally, the story fails to be memorable as in never deviates from what you'd expect.
I've wavered back and forth on whether or not to recommend this game. It is far from terrible, but there are many better games out there, particularly if the Metroidvania tag is what attracted you. This is more of a side scrolling action platformer with light map exploration elements. Steam global achievements also show a relatively low completion rate of 11.6% and a pretty heavy drop off between the first story based achievement and subsequent ones.
Additional details:
You'll quickly amass a wide arsenal of weaponry, with some more useful than others. Axes and clubs hit hard but swing slowly. Spears, swords and ranged weapons are more agile but don't pack as much punch.
The fact that only the pointy bits of a weapon can deal damage (E.G. the spear head but not the shaft) could have been cool if the controls allowed me to deftly wield the weapon. Instead, it more often led to wild swings and misses than precision strikes.
I never discovered a way to guarantee a specific swing pattern. In other words, when I hit the attack button I couldn't be sure whether I was going to get a swift thrust or a slow overhead arc. This made timing strikes somewhat of a guessing game.
Shields are also an important part of the game but don't pair well with slower weapons. I can successfully block an attack and then begin swinging my weapon only to be hit by the same enemy's next attack before mine connects.
Weapons and shields have a durability bar that diminishes fairly quickly with use. I'm usually not a fan of durability systems in games but this one encourages you to experiment with new weapons and there's never a shortage of arms.
Switching weapon and potion type in battle is a clumsy experience on a controller. You use the D-pad to scroll through a single, long list of item icons. This makes finding something specific a challenge and for the short lived enhancement potions it rarely felt worth fumbling through this menu to use them. The game's crafting system is hurt by this because all of what you can make are consumables accessed through this interface.
Combat and exploration can drag outside of unique boss encounters and areas. Considering the setting they did a decent job by including as many enemy types as they have. Even still, fighting mostly humanoids does get repetitive.
Unlike many Metroidvanias, Apotheon doesn't have areas that are inaccessible until you get an ability later in the game. Progress is instead limited by simple locked doors. Level design isn't simple, but it is less nuanced with fewer secrets and intertwined areas. As mentioned before, I hesitate to even call it a Metroidvania. It does have a helpful map that is useful for keeping track of where you've been.
There are a handful of neat side quests throughout the game. They reward careful exploration but don't add much to the bigger story.
In closing, I think many people are drawn to Apotheon by its graphics and setting. It's unfortunate then that the developers played the setting so safely that it comes off like they had nothing interesting to add to it.